When people think they are god

Time moves us on, away from unpleasant events and unpleasant people. Given enough time, chaos evolves into calmness and life begins to feel more normal. Balance is restored. That is the way of the world. Nature for example, continues to do what it always has done. Provide us with beautiful views of sunrises and sunsets, of pristine lakes, of snow-covered mountains, gorgeous gardens and green forests. But where there is beauty there is also brutality. Where there is life there is also death and decay. Where there is paradise on earth, we know that there is also hell on earth. We know that from all of the nature documentaries that drive those points home. We are careful when we are in nature, because it is wild and unpredictable. There are earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, landslides--natural catastrophes that we cannot prevent or warn about with 100% effectiveness. We cannot just wander onto a mountain covered in snow and ignore avalanche warnings. We would not sail a boat out onto the ocean in the middle of a hurricane. We use reason to create a relationship with nature that we can live with, in order to co-exist peacefully with it. Sometimes we try to subdue it and sometimes we are successful at it. But we cannot tame it. 

Nature is a reminder that there is good and evil in the world. Both exist independently of man. If humans had never set foot on the earth, there would still be gorgeous sunsets and hellish volcanoes and tsunamis. There would still be gentle animals and brutal ones. There would still be life and death. 

Human beings did set foot on the earth. Mankind became a part of nature, and has even tried to dominate nature. But humans will never succeed at that. Human beings have tried their best during all the centuries to dominate nature and other humans in the quest for power and greed. Many humans don't understand this obsession with power and greed; I am one of them. When this obsession gets out of hand, as it has especially during the past decade, nature supplies a correction that we are forced to focus on because if we don't, it means that many human beings will die. The current pandemic is a good example of such a correction. A vaccine may help to control it, but there will come other pandemics. There have always been, and always will be, bacteria and viruses that infect animals and humans. They exist in nature, independently of man's existence. Sometimes human beings make critical mistakes, that lead to bacteria and viruses getting the upper hand. Sometimes those mistakes are made in the name of greed and power. Hubris is a major failing in human beings, and has far-reaching consequences. Hubris says that man can do whatever he likes in and with nature. He cannot. 

I bring all this up in light of the current political situation in the USA. Nature does not care about Donald Trump, nor does he care about nature. That is a problem by itself. Corrections will continue to come regardless of whether he cares or not. But if he was more respectful toward everything, he might contribute to a world where respect for the power of nature increased. As it stands now, he does not understand his role as leader or even why he exists. He has abused his position and disgraced our country. His gods are greed and power. The irony is not lost on me that it is under his administration that a pandemic arose. From a scientific point of view, I know that it is merely a random event in nature; it could just as well have arisen under Biden. But its emergence in the age of Trump is simply one more reminder of the importance of having respect for nature, for its wildness, its unpredictability, its brutality. It is a reminder that we cannot ignore the natural world because it doesn't 'fit' with our plans. He is not a person for whom respect is important. I would imagine that if he could, he would bend and destroy nature to suit his purposes. He thinks he is God.

Civility and respect for others

I cancelled yet another newspaper subscription this morning. My husband and I have discussed cancelling our different newspaper subscriptions for the past two years, mostly because we find that they have gone from being newspapers that used to try to present the news in a neutral fashion, to being purveyors of whatever agenda they wish to push at present. To some of you, this might seem rather short-sighted; after all, you can argue that we need to get our news from someplace. We need to follow what is happening in the world. And to a certain extent, you're right. But also wrong. Because what I didn't see happening was this--we're happier without them. We no longer start the day with misery; we no longer have to discuss all that's wrong with the world at the breakfast table. I no longer ruin the start of my day by letting all the world's ills overwhelm me the minute I get up. They seep in anyway during the day, and if we watch the tv news as we do sporadically, we certainly get our dose of misery. So we don't escape it, we just control how it happens and how much we let in.

Newspapers in all countries need to be careful about over-pushing their agendas, be they conservative or liberal. Most of us grew up in a bipartisan atmosphere (at least the families I grew up with in our neck of the woods), able to see both sides, even if we leaned toward one or the other a bit more. I know there was political unrest, hatred, bitterness and spite back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s when we were growing up; you just need to google Vietnam, racial unrest, Watergate and Nixon. But it is so totally extreme and out of control now. Nowadays, judging by what I see happening in the USA, we are so bitterly divided, with the gap widening a bit more each day, such that I fear for the future of our country. We are still a young country compared to most European countries that have centuries of wars and unrest behind them. It feels like a civil war is already taking place in America, fought in the media trenches and in social media and online generally. If you have the 'wrong' opinion and express it, you can expect to be hung out, brutally criticized, suppressed, fired from your job, or other such outcomes depending on the audience that gets a hold of what you said. You will get your fifteen minutes of fame and then some, but not in the manner you would have chosen for yourself. Good people who might want to say something become afraid to do so, whereas the people who don't care at all what other people think of them, have free reign.

I don't want a civil war, nor do I want a world where we are not able to express our opinions. But there is a way of expressing opinions that needs to change. We need to relearn civility. Civility is defined as 'formal politeness and courtesy in behaviour or speech'. We need to relearn how to respect others. It is possible to have a different opinion from others without expressing hatred for those who do not share your views. It is possible to discuss both sides of a situation without being labelled a pariah for doing so. Isn't this approach what judges and lawyers engage in everyday? They work on court cases that need examination of both sides of the issue. Imagine a world where judges ruled a person guilty before the trial. That would not be a democracy, and would not be a country I'd want to live in. And yet, we are behaving in this way on social media and in the media generally, judging and sentencing people before they and we have had a chance to discuss the issues.

Some younger people I know have now limited or cancelled their social media accounts because of the hatred they see online. It's tempting to follow them. I haven't up to now because social media remains an important connection to my family and friends in the USA. But I have reduced my interaction with social media in order to stay peaceful. You might ask why peace is so important to me; after all, the world has many problems that need to be tackled. That's true. But I know from experience that anger and volatility don't solve problems. They fuel the fire of hatred and revenge. Assertiveness, peaceful protests, standing up for yourself, being able to reach out to the other side in order to discuss the issues--these are what solve problems. Diplomacy, compromise, an empathetic approach--these solve problems. Anger gets spent, and after it burns out, the real work begins. The question at present is who will be willing to work for real change in politics at home and globally. The type of change needed must be fronted by civil and respectful leaders.

Reflections on the new year so far

Since the new year started, the world has continued its downward spiral into chaos. Whether we end up in true chaos remains to be seen. Of course, one can look at it the other way--that everything that has happened is business as usual, or politics as usual. Who can say? Since the beginning of January, the American president took out a high-ranking Iranian general, Iran responded by bombing American military bases in Iraq, Iran's military shot down a commercial plane carrying innocent passengers using two missiles and killing all onboard, Iran withdrew from its nuclear treaty, there have been several earthquakes in Puerto Rico of all places, hurricanes along the English coast, Australia's bushfires are out of control and it's estimated that a billion animals have died in addition to nearly twenty-five people, Meghan and Harry (Megxit) have seceded from the British monarchy in order to pursue independent lives, the push for impeachment of the American president continues, 2020 is an election year for the American presidency, leading most to wonder how impeachment proceedings will affect election activities during the year, one of Norway's prominent young writers/artists who committed suicide on Christmas Day was buried on January 3rd in one of the saddest and rawest funeral services I have witnessed on national TV, climate change continues to dominate global conversations (as well it should), top companies in the USA and in Norway are having economic problems/going bankrupt leading them to close stores nationwide and lay off many people. And the list goes on. It's as though all the world's loans and bills 'came due' simultaneously, meaning that we now have to pay back and pay out in full for our greed and foolishness and ostrich-like behaviour.

We cannot afford to keep our heads stuck in the sand any longer. We cannot shove the problems before us for the next generation to solve. Greed has caused so many problems, globalism likewise. The quest for greater profits, large company mergers, global solutions for what should be national solutions, global expansion at all costs in the name of profit, is killing the world slowly. Respect for the life around us has taken a back seat. We cannot continue on this path.

I have talked to many people, young and middle-aged, about these problems, and most agree that we need to change the way we live our lives. It doesn't have to be dramatic, but if everyone does their part, there will be noticeable change on a global scale. We can start by living simpler lives, walking and exercising more, eating less (and cutting down on meat consumption), buying less food and not throwing it away when it is unused, buying what we need instead of buying impulsively, watching less TV, not buying new cell phones and new cars every year or every other year, repairing appliances instead of tossing them (this also means that companies must step up to the plate and do their part to manufacture appliances that last longer than five years, in other words, they need to eliminate built-in obsolescence in the name of profit). We can cut down/eliminate our use of plastic bags, and try not to buy bottled water (although this means that community water purification systems have to function optimally at all times in order to provide drinkable tap water). We need national healthcare in the USA that is affordable and equitable for all. We need to elect politicians who think this way, who are interested in preserving the planet, who are not hypocrites when it comes to how they live, who are service-oriented and kind people. We need more Jimmy and Rosalynn Carters, who have spent their retirement years building homes for others, not just thinking of themselves or traveling around the country lecturing and earning millions for their lectures so that they can buy fancy homes. We need politicians who are willing to serve and to inspire their constituents. We need more respect for others and less argumentativeness, we need more service-oriented attitudes and less self-entitlement, we need more generosity and less greed, we need more kindness and less bullying and hate talk. We need to get on the same page in order to solve the problems in front of us; the solutions are not black and white. We cannot rely on religion to show us the way, because many religions have their own internal problems to solve first before they can preach to their followers about how they should live. In short, we cannot wait for others to show us how to live; the changes must come from us, from the grassroots, and move upward. It should not take a world war or a pandemic to force us into the action necessary to change us and to save our planet.

Failure to respond to emails in the workplace--a growing problem

I read this article in today's New York Times:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/opinion/sunday/email-etiquette.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

and it got me to thinking about my own experiences with sending and receiving emails in the workplace. I find myself getting increasingly irritated by the number of people who do not respond to the emails I send them. And I am not a person who sends unnecessary emails. But I am a person who tries to respect the five levels of hierarchical leadership in my workplace, and the multiple managers that I must relate to and communicate with about one issue. I formally report to two leaders, but if I need to send an email to the leaders under them in the hierarchy (four people, all middle-level managers), then I must also cc: the two top leaders. If I send an email to the leaders under the four middle-level managers, then I must cc: the four middle-level managers and the two top leaders, and so on, ad nauseam. Of course this means that the two top leaders get an immense amount of emails that they may not always need to get or respond to. And if there was trust in the workplace, if leaders trusted the managers under them, then they wouldn't need to be copied onto all emails at all times. But the standard m.o. is 'cover your ass'. Employees know this, and also that they will be called onto the carpet if they do anything that their managers are not informed about. And they do get called onto the carpet for daring to do something that a leader or manager has not approved. And so on.

Leaders and managers have no business complaining about the volume of email they receive, especially if they are responsible for and support a system as outlined in the first paragraph. Their jobs require them to respond to emails from their employees, most of whom end up completely stymied and unable to do their jobs properly if they don't get the necessary responses from their managers and leaders.

Failure to respond to emails is rude. Plain rude. I don't mean by this that you as a leader/manager need to respond immediately to an email. But when two weeks go by without a response, that is unacceptable for employees working on a project who require a response from above in order for them to progress with the project. They are stymied, the project is stymied, and the people who depend upon their progress down the line are stymied. This leads to inefficiency and inertia in the workplace.

I also think that failure to respond to emails can be a deliberate tactic to stymie employees who are creative and who have good solutions to problems. It is a way of telling them that their ideas don't matter. I see that very often in my workplace; my co-workers complain about this often. They end up feeling disrespected and unappreciated.

So, as a manager or leader, don't complain that your workplace is inefficient and that your employees are not motivated, when you have not responded properly to their emails that are required by you in order to get approval or permission to do their jobs. No one wants to hear how busy you are, because we are all busy. Stop complaining, stop wasting your time going to endless and useless meetings, and make it a priority to answer your employees' emails. Chances are that if you treat your employees with respect, they will respond in kind. Answer those emails. And maybe, just maybe, efficiency in the workplace will make a comeback.

What Employees Want and Why Employers Should Make Sure They Get It

Available on Amazon
https://tinyurl.com/y84hcu9j

More important than ever---what employees really want

Sexism and misogyny are alive and well

Don’t ever for one minute get sucked into a state of false belief that sexism, misogyny, and sexual harassment are things of the past, and that women have won all the battles that they need to win. In fact, the battle is just beginning. After getting a glimpse of Trump’s America, I think we’ve been set back by about fifty years. So we need to begin again. We need to raise boys and girls to have respect for each other. We need to remind young adults that NO means NO when it comes to sexual activity, and that no one should ever feel pressured to have sex just to please another person. Male chauvinist pigs like Trump need to go back to the school of hard knocks to get re-educated. It’s not ok to sexually objectify your daughter, your wife, other women, etc. In fact, it’s not just creepy, it’s ethically wrong and illegal if you step over any line in that regard, even if you are married in most civilized societies. Since he seems to have a hard time keeping his pants zipped, it’s no wonder he can’t keep his mouth zipped. I guess there are women stupid enough to fall for his tricks. That’s what always surprises me, the women who come out in support of this dinosaur. Men like him are nearing extinction in my book. They’ve had way too much power and they’ve misused it when it comes to women. I don’t know if women will be any better in the same positions of power, but it sure as hell might be nice to find out. And we will if Hillary gets elected.

You might also think that dinosaurs like these are only an American problem. WRONG again. Norwegian academia has and has had its share of these dinosaurs throughout the past twenty years. Men who comment inappropriately on your looks, men who step over the line physically and verbally at Christmas parties when they’ve had too much to drink, an institute leader (deceased) who saw nothing wrong with patting the rear end of a visiting woman scientist from Brazil. The same institute leader who used to like to corner non-Norwegian women in the elevator to ask them if they knew the difference between ‘fytte’ (used in connection with curse words) and ‘fitte’ (pussy) because if you are not Norwegian, those words often sound alike and you can make a fool of yourself if you pronounce them the wrong way. Another male scientist who regaled his female colleagues with jokes about ‘bushes’, again in the elevator where you couldn’t just escape immediately. The list of sexist, odd and questionable behavior is endless. These are men who enjoyed making women feel uncomfortable so that they could joke about it afterward. These are men like Trump, with a lot of power and no respect for women. Because it's really simple in my book--if you respect women, you don't behave this way. These are men who consistently ignore women in favor of men when it comes time for choosing new leaders or promoting from within, even when those men are clearly less qualified compared to the available women. Men who tell women who get angry about the unfairness and injustice of these types of behaviors that they are ‘unbalanced or psychologically unstable’, or that ‘perhaps they should get some professional help’. Men who joke that these women who get angry just need to get laid. And the women who joke like this about other women are just plain traitors to their own gender. Men have had the power now for eons and eons, and it’s time women took the reins. I don’t know how long that’s going to take, but we’re not going to get there if feminism is defined solely by women who take off their clothes in the name of emancipation (from what or who?), so that they can appear in porno rags and online videos and define these actions as feminist. It might be one definition of modern feminism, but it’s not the major one. They get paid a lot of money for it, however. Perhaps that’s how they think they will gain respect. They will gain money and power, yes, but not necessarily respect. That’s not a given. But perhaps for them, it's enough. I don't know and frankly, I don't care. It's not my definition of feminism and it does not help most average working women to fight the daily battles that they fight in their workplaces.

Oddly enough, if you look at many of the classic films from the 1940s and 1950s, there are roles written for women that are worthy of respect. The female characters are strong, opinionated (think Katharine Hepburn's character in the comedy Adam’s Rib), and they sometimes suffer for their independent ways and strong wills. But they are women to look up to. Many of them work, they are professional, they speak and dress well, and they stand up to and stand their ground with the men in their lives. I can relate to the women's roles in these films, in a way that I cannot relate to many of the modern roles written for women now. How can that be? I am not sure what happened, but respect for women has taken a real nose-dive recently. We need to figure out why and how to fix that. And I think we should start by emphasizing that both men and women have a lot to gain by treating each other with respect, in the workplace and outside of it.

On civility and respect

I was talking to one of my friends the other day, and our conversation veered into the area of civility and respect for others. She was bemoaning the lack of respect that she deals with on an often daily basis in her job as grammar school teacher. The fact of the matter is that children don’t respect teachers nor are they instructed at home to do so. Her feeling is often that some parents have ‘abandoned ship’ by not involving themselves in their children’s education. I listen to her frustration and understand that it must be very difficult to teach when you do not have the attention and respect of your class. This is not to say that all her pupils are like this, but those who are disrespectful make it difficult for the rest of the class, as always. I remember this from my own grammar school days, seething because one or two boys disrupted the class and the teacher ended up punishing the entire class for the sins of a few. But generally, the disrespect and the lack of manners that we are witnessing at present are slowly destroying the fabric of society. We need respect and civility in order to deal with each other on a daily basis. When these disappear, I think I will move to the hills, far away from everyone, and live as a hermit.

Oslo is now trying to do something about the lack of manners that abound on public transportation. There have been several newspaper articles recently describing how younger people are not offering their seats on buses or trams to older people or to pregnant women for example during rush hour, and discussions and debates abound on television about how to deal with the problem. In my book, it’s a simple answer. Just do it. Just open your mouth and offer your seat to an older person or an obviously pregnant woman. For every person who says no thanks, there are two who will say thank you and take you up on your offer. It costs nothing to try offering your seat. It is better than never offering it at all. Have we become such a passive society that we ignore what is going on around us? Are we so tuned out listening to our music or reading our newspapers that we cannot see what is going on around us? Have we become thoughtless people? There are other problems as well. There is no such thing as ‘cueing up’ in Norway, at least not from what I can see in Oslo. Lines that form are suddenly ‘ignored’ by a few people who decide that they need to be first. It is infuriating to witness this, because none of the Norwegians get angry either when this happens (except me, the American and the New Yorker). I just think back to the time when there was a public transportation strike in New York City during the early 1980s; lines stretched around the block to take the private buses that transported folk to and from the different boroughs, and you could easily wait in line for an hour to board a bus. If you had tried to cut in line before someone else, you would have had your head handed to you. New Yorkers believe in lines and they will (loudly) defend their place in line and prevent another from unfairly cutting in line before them. That’s just how it is and I for one think it’s correct to comment someone else’s rude behavior if they try to cut in line. It may lead to arguments, but hey, that’s better than standing by passively letting the rudeness and disrespect occur.

A new and particularly disrespectful trend among some people (especially the younger people but also some middle-aged as well) is to double or triple book an evening—in other words, to say yes to two or three invitations and then to choose the best or what they consider to be the coolest event to attend. I am just surmising that this is the case because I have no other explanation for the behavior. I have now witnessed (and experienced personally) this several times.  On one occasion, I invited several people to a small dinner party, and all of them said they could come. The day before the dinner, I sent out a little reminder email and wished everyone welcome. Immediately afterward, I received an email from one person telling me she could not make it because of last minute work deadlines. Had I not emailed her, she would not have showed up and would not have informed me at all. I would have called her wondering where she was and she would have waited until then to tell me. I cannot rule out that she had made other plans that were more important to her. On the evening in question, another person almost didn’t come because her thirty year old son was returning home from traveling and she ‘suddenly’ had to pick him up at the airport. As it was, she showed up late but at least she showed up. But those of us who were present at the dinner wondered why he couldn’t just have taken a taxi home when he knew his mother had made other plans. But it was her fault anyway for not standing up for herself and saying that she had other plans. And so it goes. On a recent job outing (dinner out at a restaurant), ten people had agreed to meet for dinner and all of them expressed enthusiasm about getting together, even up until three days before we were all to meet. Exactly three days before the dinner, four people canceled: two had made other plans and were completely open about this (!); one said it would probably be difficult for her to make it without giving any specific reason; and one was genuinely sick. A table had been booked for ten people, and six people showed up. I can only wonder how conferences and seminars can plan anything, especially if food is ordered for participants. You could order food for two hundred people who say they will attend a seminar, and one hundred people show up. As I recall now, that has also happened in recent years, and the participants ended up taking the leftover food home. But the arrangers still had to pay for it. It’s completely rude and disrespectful to behave this way, but it has become much more common now than before. I never remember people behaving this way before. I have another example from last autumn—also work-related. A tour of Oslo’s haunted old buildings had been planned and ten people said they would join. A guide was booked (that ten people would have paid for). Only three people showed up. The tour was fun and very interesting, but even the guide seemed a bit taken aback and wondered where the other seven people were. This is just plain wrong--bad behavior, rude behavior. The seven people who did not show up knew that they were leaving the eventual cost over to three people. Disrespectful. As it was, the bill was paid by our institute and did not come out of our pockets, simply because one of the bosses also thought as I did, that this behavior was irresponsible. I am commenting on this type of behavior because it seems as though this is where society is heading. We ‘commit’, but only half-heartedly. We don’t show up and we don’t feel bad (none of the ‘cancellers’ in question felt badly about their behavior). We cannot count on the word of another. And that is something to worry about. If this type of behavior had just happened once, I would be inclined to let it go as a one-time thing. But unfortunately it is becoming all too prevalent. People need to speak up, to say ‘this is rude’, ‘I don’t like this behavior’ and so forth. Having manners and respect for others is part of what it means to be a responsible adult, and children need to be taught these as well. But they cannot learn the correct way to behave from adults when the adults themselves don’t know how to behave.